Certain aerial vistas are amazing due to the underlying terrain – the Grand Canyon, for example, is astonishing in one way or another every time you see it. Other sights, however, might be encountered just once in a lifetime, especially those rendered magical exclusively by weather.

I photographed ”Fog Wisps on Mormon Lake,” on a rare rainy day just out of Flagstaff en route to El Paso. (See, “New Friends,” my January, 2008 Flying Carpet column.)

One of only two natural lakes in all of Arizona,* Mormon Lake is dry much of the year and generally unremarkable from the air. But on this particular occasion I encountered rippling surface textures I’ve never seen anywhere before or since. Had I not recently visited on the ground, I might not have unraveled the visual mystery.

The lake had been dry for months and its bottom parched into a dramatic cracked-mud floor. The sudden arrival of rain had filled those cracked-mud panels with pondlets, which now in turn blossomed with individual fog wisps. It was a sight I was lucky to recognize and photograph, and one we’ll not likely see again.

Like all my Views from the Flying Carpet, this photograph was collaboratively tuned for print with Master Photographic Printer Richard Jackson, who prints for the world’s finest photographers. Each individual print is meticulously crafted, matted and/or framed, and packaged for shipping under Mr. Jackson’s supervision.